Graeme Macrae Burnet rose to prominence with his Booker Shortlisted, His Bloody Project – a genuinely original historical crime novel, of sorts, that was transfixing from start to finish. He’s followed it up with this Longlisted Booker contender.
Again you could say it’s a crime novel of a sort in which no real crime takes place, but may have been autosuggested by the psychiatrist who plays one of the novel’s two central characters.
Arthur Collins Braithwaite is a brilliant lothario that stumbles on a career in psychiatry in the 1960’s in Oxford and London. A rule breaker, he actually has no formal qualifications but has some celebrity status and notoriety that keeps him in patients for a while. One of those patients, Victoria, is the sister of our second (and third as it happens) main protagonists – Victoria’s mousy sister, (unnamed throughout the book) and her alter ego Rebecca.
Victoria is the autosuggested victim, having thrown herself to her death from a bridge after a session with Braithwaite. Unnamed sister decides to visit Braithwaite to suss him out but undercover as a patient that she calls Rebecca.
What follows is a quite brilliant study of, I would say, Schizophrenia. So different are unnamed sister and Rebecca in so many ways that we have a clear Jeckyl and Hyde situation, although without the horror.
It’s a fascinating story based around Braithwaite’s case study notes of Rebecca and unnamed sister’s ferocious battle with herself to define her true identity.
In parts hilariously funny, but always with an undertow of sinister mental health issues it makes for a unique and unputdownable read.
Bravo Mr Macrae Burnet. Two smash hits in row.
gibberish 